Ray Ison, Professor in Systems at the UK Open University since 1994, is a member of the Applied Systems Thinking in Practice Group. From 2008-15 he also developed and ran the Systemic Governance Research Program at Monash University, Melbourne. In this blog he reflects on contemporary issues from a systemic perspective.

Saturday, April 15, 2017

I
am reprising this article by Joe Earle here because of its significance
to how economics is perceived, politicised and defended. It is a useful
reminder for me as I also prepare to attend the European Society for Ecological Economics Conference in Budapest in June where I will contribute to a session "Towards an Ecological Economics of Water".

"Evaluation has allowed a small group of mainstream
researchers to define what constitutes good economics. The result is
intellectual stagnation, says Joe Earle.

In the 1970s, the University of Manchester’s economics department
housed many ways of thinking. There were econometricians and
neoclassical micro and macroeconomists, but also post-Keynesians,
feminists and others.

By the time I arrived in Manchester as an
undergraduate in 2011, out of a department of more than 50 academics,
only a few did research outside the mainstream. One was on a short-term,
teaching-only contract that was not renewed. Another taught history of
economic thought. When he fell ill, nobody was willing or able to teach
the course, so it was cancelled for my year.

In the interim, says Diane Elson,
a pioneer in feminist economics now at the University of Essex, there
developed an “implicit agreement” that it would be best for everyone if
non-mainstream economists moved on. Elson has served on the UN Committee
for Development Policy, and now chairs the UK’s Women’s Budget Group, which analyses the gender implications of economic policy.Another former member of Manchester’s economics department says he was told he would “wither on the vine” if he stayed.

Has
neoclassical economics, then, shown that it is the single right way to
understand the economy? Not if the past decade of crisis is any guide.
In fact, the homogenisation of Manchester’s economics department has
been driven by successive rounds of research evaluation.

Before
the Research Assessment Exercise, reports in the university’s archives
focused on the pressures of increasing student numbers and savings
targets. Post-RAE, one report reads: “1996 was dominated by the RAE; the
preparation, the waiting and the result, which was a 4 [out of
5]...sights have to be set higher for the next round.”

A priori,
there’s no reason why such a goal should trigger an intellectual
narrowing. But the early RAE panels—appointed by the Royal Economic
Society—were overwhelmingly comprised of established neoclassicists with
little knowledge of other traditions. In effect, the RAE allowed a
small group of mainstream economists to decide—in private—how to define
economics.

Once the cycle began, university management had to
reshape their economics departments to maintain funding and prestige.
Institutions began to use journal ranking lists, none of which the
Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) endorses, to inform
their research strategy and hiring.

Neoclassical journals
dominate these lists: Keele University’s influential list, for example,
ranks no non-mainstream journals as 4* and only a few as 3*. As early as
1994 the University of Manchester was advertising in The Guardian for “mainstream economists” who could boost their research profile.

As
economists learn that success comes from a certain type of paper in a
top mainstream journal, each assessment becomes more skewed than the
last. In REF 2014, many assessors were editors of major neoclassical
journals and none were recognised non-mainstream economists.

In that assessment, 27.7 per cent of the research submitted to the economics sub-panel was rated as 4*, and 48.9 per cent as 3*. These were the highest scores in Panel C which, broadly, covers the social sciences.

One
possibility is that economists are smarter than their colleagues in
neighbouring disciplines. Another, I would argue more convincing,
interpretation is that the “extreme selectivity” of submissions, to
quote the economics sub-panel’s report, shows that universities have a
particularly clear idea of what constitutes ‘excellent’ research in
economics.

Many
economists with research interests outside neoclassical economics have
moved into business schools; others, including Elson, are in sociology
departments. In REF 2014, 1,361 outputs submitted to the business unit
of assessment were cross-referred to the economics subpanel, as the
business panel felt it lacked the expertise to assess them. This amounts
to over a third of submissions to the economics unit of assessment. In
15 universities, 10 or more outputs took this route, suggesting the
presence of whole shadow economics departments.

Exiling
economists to other departments narrows the boundaries of what is
considered to be credible economics, damaging our ability to address
economic and social challenges. It also increases the distance between
outsiders and insiders, allowing the mainstream to create an
increasingly stagnant intellectual environment.

Academic freedom
is meant to allow for new viewpoints and the testing of received wisdom.
In economics, this has become incompatible with success in the REF.
HEFCE has a duty to reform the system before REF 2021."